Lady Thatcher, once a patent lawyer and research chemist, should be doubly pleased. After decades of inter-state haggling, the European Union has finally decided on the locations of a new Unified Patent Court. London will get a significant slice of the action.

The scheme, agreed in Brussels last week, will mean for the first time that patents granted will be simultaneously valid across 25 European countries. Within the EU, only Spain and Italy have opted out of the agreement.

Under the new system, the EU patent court will be shared between Paris, London and Munich. The court's central division will be in the French capital, Munich will deal with applications relating to mechanical engineeering, and the UK end of the operation will be responsible for patents concerned with pharmaceuticals and chemistry - once the former prime minister's area of expertise.

The new patent court is likely to reinforce London's increasingly prominent position as an international legal centre, bringing in increasingly high value disputes from abroad. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills estimated that companies could save as much as £20,000 on translation services on each new patent. The court is not expected to come into force until 2014.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, welcomed the outcome of the negotiations. "This is a major success for the UK and for businesses. The deal means for the first time a single patent will be valid across 25 European countries.

"The reduced translation costs and simplified enforcement regime will help to support innovative companies and make an important contribution to growth across Europe....This agreement should provide a significant boost to UK and European innovative businesses at a time when new sources of economic growth are important."

Lawyers welcomed the deletion of proposed regulations that would have allowed intellectual property litigants to refer their claims to the Court of Justice of the European Union - a forum criticised as inadequately equipped to deal with complex patent cases.

Chris Mercer, president of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, said: "[The government] appears to have succeeded in making sure that London gets an important role in hearing cases in an area of technology and intellectual property law where we have a great deal of expertise: pharmaceuticals and life sciences."

"From what we have seen so far, it looks as if the UK government has played a valuable role in bringing about an agreement that is much better for UK and European businesses than the one that the Polish presidency was trying to rush through in December 2011."

Richard Willoughby, a patents solicitor at the specialist intellectual property firm Rouse, gave the announcement a more qualified welcome. "The central division deal is a compromise of uncertain benefit to the users of the system," he said. "If ... this is perceived as a successful deal, hopefully there will also be a willingness to address some of the other concerns with the details of the aggreement.

"This leaves the practicalities of setting up the court – finding the judges, facilities, working out fees, finalising the rules of procedure – to be resolved. It has been proposed that this would all be done by [mid-]2014, which is very optimistic. Costs also remain very unclear."

Ilya Kazi, a partner at intellectual property advisors Mathys & Squire, was also sceptical: "It's not clear that the new organisations, which will require highly-skilled judges if they are to be credible and which, like any European institutions, will have a cost associated with running them, will represent a net improvement on the status quo."